I have a question, I revently found a old 3d printer in my brothers basement, apparently its a “nophead mendel 90” that he built years ago but then lost interest in.
I would love to try and bring it back to life, but I know very little about printing, and have no idea where to start. Is a printer this old compatible with modern slicers? What software would I use to connect to it via usb? I tried to do research on my own, but found very little useful info about how to actually get it working
Even if modern slicers have gained a lot of advanced features, to my knowledge the gcode they output is still very simple. You can put all kind of fancy commands in the start and end gcode, but the actual printing part consists almost exclusively of commands that move the nozzle to a specific XYZ coordinate, and/or make the extruder motor move the filament either backwards or forwards.
Maybe ask your brother about what software he used it with? If the printer has an sdcard reader it might be easier to print off that than try to get it to communicate with a computer. I don’t have any first hand experience with that old printers, but I would guess it uses some kind of serial over USB protocol similar to modern printers. If you’re using Windows I think you might need to track down a driver for the printer’s serial controller, but if you have Linux there’s a chance it has the necessary drivers built in.
3d printers haven’t changed that much. If you can get some info from your brother and he can tell you what might be wrong (if anything) that would be very helpful.
They’ve changed A LOT for one they aren’t made of wood anymore. This isn’t an old ender. It’s made of mdf!
But he can learn. And if he gets it going, and the other components are OK, he could transfer it onto a metal frame. He could use this printer to print parts for some new printer build that was made from parts of this current build.
Everybody, thanks for all the help. After a whole lot of fiddling I got the thing to move, just to find out that it expects 3mm Filament, which is not sold at my local store. So faced with replacing the hotend and extruder I gave up and ordered a kp3s pro for less than 100€, maybe my first printer should be something that actually works.
Of course. Especially those DIY printers are pretty resilient to aging. I have Anet A8, one of the early ones, that has been through so many changes it’s far better than most new printers these days. If you are into it, go ahead it will be a fun project.
Good enough to get you started. For day-to-day use you might want to upgrade to a modern design.
software? Could be Repetier host (never used it so but I know that it was common back in the day): https://www.repetier.com/download-now/
now that is helpful, how did I miss those. I’m excited!
